


never let me go

by oftachancer



Series: here in this moment [5]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Multiverse, Mythal's Servant, Peripheral Storylines, Prophecies, Time Travel, hurt and healing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2019-08-19 09:25:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16531853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oftachancer/pseuds/oftachancer
Summary: Aran Trevelyan - the seventh scion of Ostwick's Bann Trevelyan - had led a sheltered life at the Starkhaven Chantry as a historian and archivist's assistant. He's been thrust into multiple wars, has died and risen twice, been possessed by a demon once, and has a piece of the Fade permanently stuck in his palm. Not to mention suffused into his very being.But nothing prepared him for what would happen when a traitor to the Inquisition stabbed him with a strange, glowing green dagger. In the blink of a cosmic clock, he's gone from place to place, time to time.Fortunately, he has a knack for making friends and finding help. This whole bouncing around time, trying to put things right thing, though? Oh, boy, it's hard. Now, if only he could find his way home. To his time. To his place.





	1. try to drown me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Khirsah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khirsah/gifts), [delazeur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/delazeur/gifts).
  * Inspired by [By Any Other Name](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7566736) by [delazeur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/delazeur/pseuds/delazeur), [Khirsah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khirsah/pseuds/Khirsah). 



> Mythal's Fox finds himself in yet another world, where his memories are restored even as his purpose is stolen away again. (9:41 Dragon - Voice-Verse)

  
Hale gasped, swallowing a mouthful of saltwater, kicking hard to find the surface, air- After everything, was he going to die by drowning?

'Mythal,' he called in his heart, pushing through the water, praying he was swimming up and not down. 'All-mother! I beg you! If I am to serve you, let me live!'

He broke through the foam, coughing, throwing up even as he struggled to keep his head above the waves. Barely, through the pelting rain and wild foam, he could see rocky cliffs rising above him, stabbing the night sky, piercing the veil. He coughed again, throwing all his energy into kicking, pushing, reaching those damned rocks.

The next wave did the work for him, thrusting him forward to crash against the stone. He howled, swallowing another mouthful of the sea, as he broke against the cliffs, skin-flaying against the jagged surface. Water and air slamming out of him as the wave retreated and he landed hard on the sea-tossed boulders below.

Move. Move fast. Keep moving.

He clambered to his feet, coughing, scrambling across slick, rugged rocks with a growing sense of familiarity. Caves… He knew the mouth of those caves, didn’t he? Like something from a dream, long forgotten. He pressed himself to the cliff-face, fingers curling around the deepest grooves he could find as another wave broke against his back, trying to pull him back out to sea with it. His flesh tore as he fought, scrambled, drowned all over again.

The higher ground was inside. Protection. A path. He was nearly sure. Nearly was enough.

Survive. That was all. Focus on surviving, first.

He ran as the wave retreated, reaching the turbulent tide pools and the beckoning entrance to the sea cave. The next wave swept him through its entrance and tossed him unceremoniously to roll across the stones among other the castaways: seaweed, shells, fish, and foam.

He threw up again, gagging as much of the water out of his stomach as he could manage. Crawled. Stumbled. The crashing waves threw white spray across the narrowed cave entrance, sprinkling him, flooding the stones around his boots, but blissfully retreating.

Safe. For now. He sagged against the cave wall, still coughing, heedless of the foam dripping down his chin.

Dark. Freezing. Wet.

 _It looks on the gardens, soft whispers surrounded him like a cloak. It looks at the trees. The seas catch it, bearing it to remembering shores_. “Survive,” he choked, spat, yelled at himself. His voice was swallowed by the crash of the storm.

Shelter, check. Now for heat. Dry out. Prevent hypothermia. Next steps.

He leaned against the wall of the cave as he walked deeper. It felt so familiar. “Old songs,” he rasped. He knew where the tide pools were, avoided stumbling into them as he made his way through the dark. He knew the smell of algae clinging to the stalactites. The sharp tang of the seaweed.

Ostwick? Was that a name? A place? _Received by the cove, in person._ He knew this place. _Knew_ it. As though it were more than merely familiar. Home? No, not home, but something similar. An origin. Trevelyan. That was a name and a place. _No one understands him but the man with gout who smiles approvingly and asks him a question about the tides._ His name. No. His name was _Hale, eolas'esayelan Mythal’enaste_. But also, this: Trevelyan.

He remembered the caves, bonfires in the dark, fishing out of the sea mouth, swimming from its shelter when the waves were clear and calm and steady as a mirror.

If it was a truth, a real place, a real name… then there was a give in the next bend that opened onto a small path… and there was. “All-mother, thank you,” he whispered fervently.

Alive. And he knew where he was. Somewhat. He was steps ahead. Now the drying, the heat, and the when.

He met a wall where the path should have continued. Had he been wrong? No- the slope of the rocks, the deep pool just behind him… He knew - he was sure - that there was a path here. He felt across the wall. Not stone. Clay, maybe? Rough enough, dark enough, it seemed… He bit his lip, kneeling, feeling along the ground and could feel air coasting across his fingertips. A door, then. Smuggling tunnel? That’s what it had been in the past. _Unusually genial, a gentlemanly dissembler_. How far back had he gone?

He shut his eyes, pawing at the clandestine portal with bloody fingers and palms, searching, searching, shivering. His fingers slipped into a small crevice, pressed, and the wall he was leaning against folded back, leaving him sprawling.

Smooth. He crawled across the stone worn smooth; too smooth for nature. Too warm, too. He pressed his cheek to it, groaning in pleasure. Magic. It had to be. Or a bear had just been laying here. It didn’t smell like fur. Only so good, heat soaking in, warding off the ocean’s chill. _All he knows has been exhausted, the name escapes his memory, but there are no inns near the bay any longer_. More, he needed more.

He pushed up to his knees, unbuckling the sodden straps that bound his armor to him. Gilded elvhen steel and leather. His arms ached, fingers burned with every move. He brushed the ropes binding the bundle to his back, started and cursed. “No, no, no, no, fuck, no, Mother, please-“ he fumbled the bundle from his back and carefully opened the leather housing for the scroll. Water spilled out on the floor and Hale cursed in earnest, tears springing unbidden to his already salt-stinging eyes. No- no- he couldn’t lose this. Not this! Her words, unheard by him, how could- He thrummed to his feet. If the floor was smooth and warm, there was some purpose for this place. Which meant people. Mages. They had to have supplies, something of use.

It took him too long to stumble blindly through the dark before he cracked his knee against a sharp edge with a shout, hopping back. When he felt for it again, he found the lid of a chest and - merciful Mother, Mythal, Protector of All - piles of clothes. Piles of dry, warm cloth. He collected as much as would fit into his arms, crawling along the ground, feeling for his wet trail to find his way back to the rolled, soaked parchment. Her words, his only history, his purpose laid out in simple words. What had they been? Patiently, carefully quaking, he peeled the scroll open, hissing with every catch and tear. "Please let me fix this. Please let some of it be left. Mother-of-all, I don’t know when I am. I don’t know what You will-"

Panic wasn’t going to help. “Breathe,” he told himself even as tears poured down his cheeks in the dark, mingling with the salt water dripping from his hair. Only when the parchment had been rolled out and flattened and lovingly layered with cloth did he collapse to the side. Nothing more for it. Nothing he could do.

He peeled off his cuirass, his shirt, his leather greaves, sprawling naked against the warmth, letting it bake the feeling back into his skin. Now every shiver that wracked him was for a new reason. If he lost Her prophecy… what then? He stared up into the dark. A wolf. An altar. Compassion and Order. Mercy and Kindness. Darkness. What were the words? The _words_.

“All-Mother?” he whispered. “I don’t know if you’re here, or if you can hear me, but - ” Only the sounds of the raging storm in the distance answered him. “I am so very fucked. So very, very fucked.”


	2. if she made a mistake

Pure darkness. He was fairly certain he’d slept. He couldn’t hear the distant rumble of thunder or waves any longer. The scroll was dry to the touch, he could feel as much. Brittle with salt and sea, but dry. There might still be something salvageable, but not if he mangled it in the dark. 

His armor was still heavy with salt, but he dressed in braies and a tunic - they had dried as he slept. Then, arms full of armor and his cloth padded notebook, he fumbled his way back to the hidden door. Out into the cave. Towards the cove. Listened.  _ With seven heads and eighteen eyes, they wriggle and squirm, undone. _

The gulls were sounding off, gentle waves lapped against the rocks. He knew, even before he saw it, that the sea would be pure blue and smooth as a mirror. It always was, after a rager like the night before. As if in apology. Or - more likely - innocently whistling as if to say ‘who me? I didn’t just try to murder you. I would never.’

Now, in the sunlight, he could easily pick his way up the path to the upper trailhead. The tops of the cliffs were wreathed in heavy fog, but he knew the path like the back of his hand. Better. He’d never walked the back of his hand literally blind-folded. He had. These trails. He could recall the feel of the cloth itching his cheeks as his brother prodded him with a stick, laughing. Podrick? No, Patrick. The ass. Even so long later, his body remembered which path led back to the manor. 

It was colder than it should have been. Desperately quieter. The day after a storm, there should have been calls and shouts from various workmen and farmers rallying to repair walls and roofs, asking for help to clear their land in return. The turn of wheels, carts hauling lumber and grain and bruised fruits.

Only the wind mournfully called through the windswept black birches. 

His first glimpse of the tall black spire of the manor was filled with relief. Yes. He knew this place. Knew its slope and slant and the dark arrow piercing the sky. But that relief was short-lived. The closer he came, the more gaping holes he saw in the roofs. The crumbling walls. Even the outer gates were falling apart, as if from long decay. 

He’d thought he’d landed well before his time, but maybe… after? Far after. Had Maxwell let their family seat fall to ruin? One of his descendants?

Moss was growing over the iron gates, obscuring the Trevelyan seal he knew to be there. The path was littered with fallen branches, the remains of carts. Bones.  _ A long, long crowd where each seemed lonely, some who were drowned, some who’d been wed, some that I had not known, who were dead _ . He didn’t bother to count them. Some kind of horror had taken place here, that much he could see. Ruined armor - leather and steel - was piled amid ivory. “Darkness,” he whispered. “What in the Void happened?”

The massive oaken front door was off its hinges.  _ Bent and weak, some that I loved and gasped to speak to _ \- The stone seal above it scarred and blackened, strangled by the same ivy that seemed to have taken over the entire property in lieu of actual tenants. 

Inside, he heard a long creak and longer, deeper groan. As though the house itself were struggling awake after a long slumber. Or someone was inside. Carefully, he laid his collected armor and cloth-wrapped scroll on a dry patch of earth beneath a drunken shed, retrieving his daggers. Just in case. 

_ The dogs howl in the moonlight night. All the dead I ever knew going one by one by two _ . No one could possibly still live here. Not like this. 

He stepped inside, studying the still darkness, sunlight pouring through holes in the walls and ceiling in patches. Were those footsteps above? Merely the settling of ancient boards? Whispers, not the ones he knew, but sibilant and out of tune, clung to the walls, flustered by every fleck of dust his boots kicked up.

It was all so familiar. And all so completely foreign. He remembered the main foyer clean and warm, cast in the firelight, servants scrubbing the stones, the scent of baking bread and bubbling bacon wafting in from the kitchen. But whatever had happened to this place had stolen not just the people, the smells, the warmth - it had stolen some essential essence from it. Safety, perhaps. He looked up the double stairs, broken boards and fractured rails leading to the upper landing.  _ Across the moon-stream, shade to shade _ .

Another low moan rent the boards above him.

**_Don’t look up_ ** _.  _ He could feel the air from the whisper just behind his ear - frost snapping against the back of his neck.  **_She hates being seen. Anywhere but up._ **

The Trevelyan fox kept moving. Steady. Step after step. He did not look up. He did not look back. If they knew he could hear them, there would be more. They would pour out over him like waves, like wind, like darkness- wait. Was that it? Some part of Her call? Lost words. Old songs. Unfortunately, moving forward meant he also couldn’t go back out the door he’d come through. There was an exit through the kitchens to the gardens. Just keep going. Straight ahead.  

He stumbled as his boot caught something white and frail, sending it skittering across the floor. Finger bones. “Shit,” he muttered. The whispers rose, swelling around him, piercing him like frozen needles. 

**_Don’t go home, they know._ **

**_The knocking is coming from the mirror again. She thought it was the window._ **

**_Don’t look._ **

**_She told me he wanted to see the thunder._ **

An all too familiar wail rose behind him, shrill, bending the fabric of the air around it into a cone.

“Fuck-” He dove to the ground as the ice split the air where his torso had been. Rolled, scattering bones, feeling the ooze of rotten flesh split as clammy hands closed over his calf. Corpses, long-forgotten, now remembered. Bitter laughter. Tears like rain. “Fuck, fuck, fuck-” He kicked, eliciting a groan from the closest corpse, thrusting his blade down into a mold-furred arm. Too many. There were too many. Too much. Endless bones, old and new, clambering up from the floors, in through the holes in the walls, up from the cemetery and the gardens-

“Yeeaagh!-” He lifted his hand and pushed his will through it, cracking the Veil into reflective fragments. The Fade pulled at him like an undertow, whining over the continuing screams of corpses, skeletons, Despair, and Rage as they were dragged through. “Go home,” he whispered. “Go home and find yourselves. You’re not meant to be here. You’re not meant for this place-” He left the rift wide above him, sprawled on the floor, feeling the stones beneath him grow sticky with remembered gore, pooling and falling up like dark red rain into the hole he’d created. He stared into the tops of the jagged mountains with their swelling otherworldly seas and drifting, infinite light. As always - always? - it pulled at him as well and only the sharp pain of his own nails digging into the myriad cuts on his hands could keep him from falling up into the Fade along with the rest of the lost and forgotten. 

“Here I saw one,” he whispered, the words were drawn from him like pearls on a thread, “a wistful face at a certain window where there dreamed a brood left motherless. One turned to where the fields lay bare and passed from the lingering, glad to haste comfort, the other scarce could wait, she loved too well, gave too great, and died too young. Comfort to your sorrows, children, mysterious and beautiful and still.”

Only when he could no longer hear the frozen wails of despair and the last of the restless had gone did he snap his fist - and the crack in the Veil - shut. Panting, bruised, bleeding, and broken. He stared up at the familiar ceiling and the blackened outline of a woman permanently etched there. “So, so fucked.”

The demons might have been routed, but there were likely still rats, feral cats, spiders. Ugh, spiders. Too many legs. Moss and mold. Strangling ivy. The endless parade of bones. The salt-soaked words of the Mother. 

He started a fire in the cold, cobwebbed hearth. He boiled water and poured his ruined armor in to soak the salt free. He stared at the carefully unfurled scroll in the flickering light and fought the screams that burdened his lungs as he saw the carefully written words smeared; copper-soaked parchment. Nothing more. He’d bled for this empty garble. Write it again. That was all he could do. Write what was left in his mind and pray that it was enough. Perhaps She would take pity and correct what he got wrong. 

Fire stoked, he lit a torch and set out into the house. He needed a quill. Ink, if he could find it, although he could always bleed again. He wasn’t going to rest until he knew - for sure - that every last part of Mythal’s prophecy was reinscribed. He wasn’t going to sleep until every last undead and unliving thing was gone from this place. It wasn't his. Perhaps it had never been his. But they bore the same name and he owed the creaking, haunted place that much, at least. His head was still pounding from drawing on the mark, but he would do it again and again until the place was clear and cleansed.

Wolf. Altar. Compassion. Order. He wrote, in sparse notation. He’d had to wet the dried ink with spit and blood, but it flowed from the quill now. A baneful storm. Wail and bite. A cavern in the sky. Evil. The wolf and the fox. She speaks. Lost. A calling. Calling? Darkness. Doors like snakes. He flung the quill from his shaking hand, teeth gritted. Wrong. All wrong. Out of order. He retrieved the quill, cursing. I am Hale, he wrote. I am... I am… a tamed fox? In search of a furious wolf. Go to him, to the altar, the evil wind- no, storm, it… evil. No. The altar against evil? Evil. Compassion and mercy. That was it. Order and kindness. Go to him. Go to him. She is lost. Fallen. Darkened? Darkening? Darkness? 

He looked out through the broken wall at the upturned garden and the tranquil sea beyond it. The pain was distracting. 

Maybe he was back in Neriel’s world again. Neriel? Long golden blonde hair like sunlight streaming braids halla-riding with a babe against her belly- He wrote her name. And… Halladin. Free Marches. Wolf - Dread Wolf? He needed to remember Fen’Harel here, especially here. The homes he’d seen traveling with the Lavellan clan had seemed just as bereft and destroyed as this Trevelyan, from a distance. They’d traveled east towards Orlais, not southwest to the coast. Perhaps she already knew what had been waiting here. Wasting here. 

Nothing. 

Everything?

The room that had once or never been his had a hole in its floor that looked down into the kitchen. An old doll with a cracked face lay abandoned near the bed. Beady eyes twitching from within the darkness of her open head. If that wasn’t a metaphor, he wasn’t sure what was.


	3. swim against the tide

There were lights on the water. 

For a time, he wondered if they were actually there. Bobbing and swaying among the waves, a cluster of unreal, crisp snaps of flame. 

He unfolded from his place on the wall like a gargoyle, leaving daub and stones he’d been using for repairs behind. Closer now. Edging closer to the shore below from the outline of a two master further out. As he took the trail to the sea by foot, silent and smoke-wreathed, the black birches spread thin across the tops of the cliffs threw their arms about in greeting, whistling in the dark. 

“Restore to me the rocks where the snowflake reposes, if still they are sacred to freedom and love,” he muttered the old song to himself, mincing past loose stones and high roots, following the path downward. “Yet Caledonia, dear are thy mountains round their white summits tho’ elements war tho’ cataracts foam ‘stead of smooth flowing fountains, I sigh for the valley of dark Lochnagar.” 

Closer. Fixed flames nursed lightly in a series of small boats, the mash of oars through sea as steady a beat as a heart could make. He stared across the dark. Smugglers, then? A reason for that hidden door. What to smuggle in a bleak and empty world such as this? Maybe only fairy lights, remembered flickers teasing across the Veil. 

He’d spent the last month clearing out the manor. Cleaning stones. Repairing the stairs, the floors, the walls as best he could. He’d collected the armor of the dead, burying the bones in the gardens and relocating wild elfroot above them in orderly rows. Each night, he pulled apart the armor and pieced their parts into something useable. Thong by thong. Buckle by buckle. 

A mercenary’s metal greaves. An archer’s reinforced bracers. A leather pauldron and a Templar’s. His cuirass he’d woven from the unrotted thongs of leather scavenged from various saddles and armor and the rabbits he himself had snared and cleaned. The tassets were cut from the backs of whole leather braces, stItched into a span of cloth he wound and belted at his waist, leaving his braies free beneath. It was an unruly assortment, but he didn’t give two tosses. It had kept him alive against the elk that had become his cloak. It would keep him alive now.

He scaled down the rocks, all fingers and feet like a spider on the slick and sharp, casting glances out to sea. Out to sea. The same flames feasted, flickered, fumbled closer. Could he see the outlines of bodies? Shadows within shadows?

Every evening since he’d come to this place, he’d stalked the walls, facing southeast, staring as though mere will would show him Skyhold’s ramparts. He’d hunted the spirits that even now seemed to want to slip and slide through the stones and steps, as though called. Not by me. Every morning, he gathered herbs from the gardens, hanging them to dry. Checked his snares for rabbits, which he skinned and stripped, eating some and smoking the rest for later.

Silence was his friend. The call of the waves another. The wind through the birches a third. But people? No. None. He’d seen none. Expected to see none. So far as these cliffs had told him, every last was dead and gone. And those that weren’t… he wasn’t sure he wanted to come across them. Hence the armor, the regular sharpening, and the collecting of blades that he'd fastened to his calves, his forearms, his back, his chest, his waist. 

Closer still. 

His boots touched the rocks at the base of the cliffs, sand swirling amid cracked rocks and filtering in through tiny rivulets to fill tidepools. He fingered the grip of his dagger. Definitely shapes like bodies. Did corpses know how to row? Darkspawn, mayhap. Hurlocks were smarter than people gave them credit for. Let them gain the shore, he wondered. See what they wanted? Or cut them down before they had a chance to get their land legs back?

 _She walked from the sea of the earth’s tears and onto the land. She placed Her hand on Elgar’nan’s brow, and at Her touch, he grew calm and knew that his anger had led him astray._ He stepped from the shadows, gingerly, and watched them come. 

Scared faces, men, women, and children. Wide eyes in the dark, catching the light like fireflies. Bundled together like a brace of sodden logs. Children with salt-stained faces. She walked from the sea. If they were smugglers, he was an eagle’s uncle. A few bodies tumbled from the boats as they came to the small stretch of sand, splashing, weeping, laughing. Robes soaked with seawater. Robes. 

Children, he reminded himself. He waded out into the water to help them drag the boats ashore. He said nothing. He wasn’t sure what to say. A young woman swayed as her slippered toes sank into the sand, a Chant rising from her like a wind. It felt… sideways and backward, wrong. Not for her. Familiar and not. He knew the words, but he couldn’t feel them. Not like he once had; so secured in the image of Andraste’s upturned face, not understanding that it was Mythal that had protected her all those years. 

“Give us a nudge back out, if you please,” a grizzled sailor caught his eye as he hesitated. “We hadn’t seen the lights for calling for some time, but this lot needed to move. We couldn’t wait any longer. Something wrong with your signal?”

Signal. Signal? “Yes,” he said, his voice rusty from disuse. Something was wrong with his signal. He didn’t know what the hell it was. Or where. Or what it was for. 

“Well, get it fixed. The younger one always kept up with it. He coming back?”

“...I don’t know.”

“Well. They’re your people, and yours now. Take care.”

“May She calm your seas,” he murmured.

“As though they’d stay calm for long,” the sailor snorted. He pushed the dinghy back out, then the others, turning back to the cluster of people on the shore behind him. 

Young- most of them were so young, fragile in their years and so full of hope it nearly glistened from them. And they were all staring at him. So many pairs of eyes, watching and waiting. For what? They’re yours now. 

He ran his tongue over his teeth. 

“What now?” a boy asked. He couldn’t have been older than ten. 

The once Trevelyan thought quickly, watching shoulders hunch in the cold. “Right. Anyone able to give us some light? I’ll take you somewhere warm for a start.” Magefires flickered in palms in varying strengths. “That’ll do.”

They passed the nets he’d set to catch the fish thrown in by storming seas, branch and rope cages full of crabs. “You’re probably hungry; I’ll come back for those once you’re settled, make a stew. Where are you coming from?”

“Kirkwall.” The way it was said was suspicious. As though he should have known as much. Mayhap he should have. 

“Ah,” he said, as though he’d been expecting that. He could have. Mages. Fleeing. Kirkwall made sense. Either that or Tevinter, but that would have been by land, not sea, most like. He slipped his fingers in behind a ridge and pulled the mechanism. With the benefit of light, he could see the bloodstains he’d left behind when he’d come this way. And so could they. He ignored the murmurs in favor of actually looking around the space that had been nothing more than darkness for him. Unlit lanterns hung at intervals across the high, polished ceiling. Massive. The place was massive, small rooms little bigger than alcoves that split off the main hall full of beds, chests, chamber pots… Well stocked. Well prepared. If he’d known all this was here, would he have fought his way through the bloody manor at the top of the cliffs?

Probably. Yes. 

“If someone can get the lights,” he pointed above. “Makes yourselves at home, I suppose. I’ll come back with food. If there’s any need healing-” What was he saying? They were mages, for fuck’s sake. What need had they for stitches and bandages? “Well- if you’ve a need for simpler things, let me know, otherwise suit to yourselves.” 

He stalked back out, going to the nets and cages, collecting all he could carry. There had been a cauldron in there he could make a mashed stew with some sea water. Nothing fancy, but it would warm and fill a cold and empty belly. Tomorrow, he could bring rabbits down and vegetables from the garden. He glanced up as a soft pinkish light bobbed into view in the palm of a bedraggled looking woman. “What?” 

“I thought you might need help.”

He wrinkled his nose, chucking his chin forward, “You want to carry a load of fish in your robes?”

“If it’s needed.”

He snorted, “Oh, aye, sure. You look ready to fall on your face. Just- go on. Get back to the others, yeah?”

“It’s a good thing you’re doing.”

“I’ve done nothing.” He folded the nets so that they made a pouch and replaced the fish in a pile. “What are you staring at?”

“You’re a dreamer.” She smiled, “I’d not thought to find more mages on this end of things. It gives me hope, that things may truly be better here.”

“Anything’s better than Kirkwall.”

“That may be true.” 

He emptied a cage of crabs into the netting and hoisted the sides. “You want to help, you can take the other end. You know how to crack shells?”

“I can learn.”

“Fine. And you should. It’s good meat and reliable if you stay near the coasts.” He exhaled sharply as they lifted the nets and began carrying the bounty back to the inner cavern. “What were you expecting? I mean, from here. What’s the plan?”

She blinked. “We thought you’d tell us.”

Fuck, damn and blast, Void and darkness. “Right. I guess I meant… more… what do you want to-”

“You said what you meant.” She stared at him, “You’re not a part of the underground.”

“Underground? Is that what this is? For mages? Like when the slaves were being ferried out of Tevinter?” He tilted his head, “I see. That’s- yeah, brilliant. Good.”

She swallowed, exhaustion and nerves warring in her features. “Don’t tell them. Please. Some of us were waiting weeks to make our escape. They might panic. We’ve been through enough. They think they’re safe. I think... perhaps we are, with you. Are we?”

“I’m an unlucky sort, but I mostly keep it to myself.” He met her worried gaze. “Listen. Anything I could say- it won't matter much, will it? You'll believe what you do. But the best I can do is... Do you know the story of Mythal?”

“That’s… Dalish? Some Dalish god?”

“The short version is this: the All-Mother is a protector - of the Dalish, sure, but of everyone - and I’m her creature. You won’t find harm from my hands. Not directly, in any case.” He studied her, “That I can promise. Is it enough?”

She looked at the net full of fish and clacking claws between them for a long moment before she met his eyes again. “It will have to be.” She hesitated, “I’m Mirra, by the way.”

“You can call me _Hale_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was fascinated by the idea of the mage underground in the Voice-Verse, and curious what happened on the Ostwick end when Taran went south. So I thought... What would Mythal do? Put somewhere there to protect people.


	4. breathing gets harder

He felt Mirra’s eyes on him as he cleaned the fish, one by one, resting fillets on scraps of birchbark to cook. The heads and bones went into a pot full of seawater and seaweed. The scraps of muscle from the abdomens went scrape by scrape onto a stretch of hide. The fins, scales, and small bones were gathered into a pouch for later. He let her watch, let them all watch, because food was an easy way to kill and they might as well be able to see he wasn’t doing anything to hurt them. They had every reason to be nervous. And nervous mages were dangerous to themselves, let alone him. “The Veil is really thin here,” he said, not looking up, his curved blade making quick work of the shiny bodies. “So you’ll need to be careful. Keep an eye out. Help each other. If you hear something weird, it probably _is_ weird. Don’t second guess it, just find help.”

“You expect us to turn on each other? Are we to be our own Templars?” one of the men asked, huddled against the end of a bed.

“I don’t imagine that would go well, so probably not. I’m just telling you what to expect.” Hale flicked his gaze up, “Maybe it gets easier farther from the cliffs. Maybe it doesn’t. I haven’t seen anything too terrible down here. Some wisps, but they’re harmless as long as you dodge.”

“Dodge?” An older woman wrapped a found blanket tighter around her shoulders, “You want us to... dodge demons?”

“They’re physical, same as anything else. Just don’t listen to them and keep moving. Singing helps, I’ve found. Poetry. Any recitation, really.” He pointed towards the flames when he smelled the first of the fillets coming ready. “You can eat as it’s ready. No standing on ceremony here.” He frowned as no one made a move. “Look, you keep asking if I want things from you; I swear, I don’t. What you do from here on out is up to you. Entirely. That’s the point, right? Freedom? So I can tell you what I know from having lived here, but what you do with that knowledge is up to you. However, I’m pretty sure you do need to eat to live. Maybe I’m wrong.” He grew edgy in the continued silence. Not the silence. Silence, he was used to. The staring. Too many eyes, all focused on him. “What?”

“It’s just… fish?” a little girl asked, brows drawn together.

He nearly laughed, remembering a moment where he’d worn a similar expression when the Dalish had given him a handful of burned looking roots. Ghilan'nain's Fingers. Merciful Mythal. He really was cracked. “Not _just_ fish,” he told her, lifting his brows. “That right there is carp from the Waking Sea, salted by the ocean and handed into cave nets by the All-Mother herself, as a gift just for you. And the best part is, you get to eat it with your fingers.”

She bit her lip, wide eyes slanting towards the fish. “Really?”

“Here.” He unfolded from his place on the floor next to the nets, moving to squat beside the fire and tug the bark from the coals. He plucked a bit of the cooked flesh up between his fingers and popped it into his mouth. “Thank you, All-Mother.” He held out the bark to the girl, “Now you.”

She took a wary step forward, lifting her fingers in a pinching motion. “Like this?”

“Just so.”

“Thank you, All-Mother.” She pinched at the torn flesh, nibbling it from her own fingers with an elated giggle.

“How’d we do?”

“It’s good.” She nabbed another finger full. “Hot.”

“Can you hold on to this while I finish the rest of these?”

She nodded, smiling shyly as she took the bark from him.

“Thank you.”

It wasn’t enough, not nearly, to gain all of their trust, but it was a start. The rest came in the weeks and months that followed with more fish, and sleep, and clothing. The lack of Templars storming into their cave haven probably didn’t hurt anything, either.

He did his best for them, and for those who came after them, the only way he knew how. He taught them to survive. How to fish, to build crab crates, to tie snares for rabbits, to sew, trap, and cook. He showed them the best places to find berries and mushrooms; which they could eat and which they could use for salves. Skills that would help them survive, blend in, and keep their heads down. With every foray into the woods and along the shores, memories trickled back: sleek-backed halla and the slope of the aravel, his mother’s lilting voice as she called for them to stay close to the shore, Dalish songs and poems that jarred with the language he’d picked up in Mythal’s Temple. Close, but not the same. The Chant slowly became familiar again, like dressing in clothes he hadn’t worn in years. The words didn’t fit quite right anymore, but they had their own kind of warmth.

With the Chant came more memories. Hours in prayer, late nights bent over candlelit manuscripts, his nose buried in books and scrolls and collections of letters. Voices raised in song on a mountain slope in the middle of the night.

 _Dorian_. The moment the mage’s name popped into his head, while he was kneeling in the garden, pulling onions out of the ground with Mirra and a few of the children… he gasped, lungs aching. It _hurt_. That beautiful hand charring the life out of him, pouring fire into his throat- He could feel his heart shattering. All-Mother, Maker, and Andraste… to think he’d forgotten those eyes for an instant. His chest ached with it, filling for the first time in…. gods, he’d lost track of time. How long? How _long?_  He pressed his dirt-stained fist to his mouth and sagged. Eyes dark and shining like molten chocolate, shoulders tensed and strong, lips on a half smile… Every smile Aran had earned from those lips was like gold, filling his chest, making him heavy and wealthy at the same time. He didn’t realize he was sobbing until tiny, dirty fingers wiped at his cheek.

“You’re not supposed to cry until we cut them,” Elissa, a little girl with long blonde hair he’d braided just that morning for her in the Dalish style, smiled gently.

He swallowed hard, “That’s right. Got a little ahead of myself there. Sorry about that.” _Gods, so sorry._  He scrubbed his hands over his face, images still rising to the surface of his mind like cloth in the sea. Monsters from Lake Calenhad. He forced himself to laugh in lieu of collapsing. The sound came out high and wild as a winter storm.

“It’s about time to check on the bread’s rise, yes?” Mirra asked, calmly gazing at the children, “Why don’t we take a little break? See if you can find some good sturdy kindling for the fire tonight.” As they scampered off, grinning and tumbling together, she moved closer. “More memories?” Her voice was barely over a whisper.

He pressed his palms to his eyes, “Yes.”

“Yours? Or someone else’s?”

“Mine.” The hem of his robes swept like water over stone, white marble, grass, sand, polished tiles… He breathed unsteadily. “Mine. I know what my name was now.” He’d heard it in that silken, erudite voice a hundred times in the space of seconds; demanding, curious, irritated, adoring, chiding. Shouted and gasped. Aran, Aran, _Aran_ \- He shuddered, bracing himself, hands in the dirt.

As the season turned, the fog chilling frozen tracks onto the trails, he sat on his perch on the wall and studied the sea. The vegetables wouldn’t survive much past the first frost. They needed dry goods and grains to last the winter and that would have to come from further inland. Decisions. He’d avoided leaving Trevelyan land, but now... Ostwick. He’d need to go brave it, gather supplies, learn what he could.

The group in the caverns now was a different assortment. Some of the mages from the first batch had long since struck out on their own while others remained close, unsure of their next steps. Two more small boats had arrived, bringing yet more runners from the disbanded Circles to the north and west. Some, like Mirra, braved the thin-Veiled manor to help with gardening and maintaining the stores. It had been Mirra’s idea to host the Chant at the manor every day, bringing the others up to gather as one under the Maker’s eye and she hadn’t been wrong. The more days that went by with those voices lifted in song, the less he could feel the lingering presence of the spirits that slithered around the place.

“Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter. Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just.” He touched his forehead in a long-forgotten gesture as his charges finished their benediction and began gathering cloaks and supplies for the trek back down to the sea. He shut his eyes, “As you are the guiding star over the seas, All-Mother,” he murmured in Elvhen, “tend them to the cot and the fold, enfolded beneath thy mantle, thy shield of protection, guard them. You know what it is to be a hard, triumphant slave. You guided Blessed Andraste in her toils. Guide them, too, from the fiends and the lurid smoke of the abyss.” He touched the painted sun beside the door, fingers sketching its smooth outline on the rough wood. “Whoever’s listening, please protect them. All of them.”

Word of the Inquisition had reached them from some of the mages who’d gone south. Dreams. Many of the mages were connected through dreams here. Were they at home, as well, and he’d never bothered to ask? _Dorian- I need your brain here_. As always, thinking of him brought that rush of sensory memories - exhilarating and debilitating. He pressed his tongue to his lower lip and breathed sharply through his nose. That surprised sigh, that brow creased in concentration, the swing of his staff in the dusk light- _Wait it out. It’ll pass. Yeah, right._  He started at the hand that rested on his shoulder.

“If you were mine, I wouldn’t want you to ache in grief forever.”

He met Mirra’s thoughtful gray-green eyes and offered her the best smile he could manage - small, wan, and winded, but trying. “I’ve only known what I’ve been missing for a couple of weeks. I think I get a restart on the whole grieving process.”

“Maybe that’s why you forgot. Perhaps she was trying to spare you all this.”

“The All-Mother?”

“No. Your Dalish mage.”

Aran cocked his head to the side, trying to sort through the still-rising memories and her words, and managed a salient “Huh?”

“I heard you call out to her in your sleep one time. Neriel. You sounded so happy-“ she frowned. “You don’t have to talk about her if you don’t want to.”

“I’m… confused.” He had been having a lot of dreams about the aravel since they’d started hunting lessons. “I think… maybe you misunderstood-“

“You don’t have to keep it secret from us. Oh!” She shook her head, soft mouse brown hair flying around her face, a strand catching at her brow, “Maybe she didn’t tell you. Every mage has a Voice. It’s not only the Dalish.”

“Uh... I suppose so, except for the ones who are mute?”

She rolled her eyes, “Very funny. I suppose they hage some fancy Dalish word for it?”

He was becoming impatient and that wasn’t like him. It was as though she’d gone from being a reasonable helpmeet to a gibbering madwoman. And his heart _ached._ _Dorian_. _How_ _did_ _I_ _forget_ _you_ , _out_ _of_ _everything_? “ _What_ are you talking about?”

“Don’t be angry, dear. It’s only that… well, we were talking amongst ourselves and you keep such a cloak around your life, we were curious, and then we just… figured it out. Why you’re helping us. Why you keep to yourself and seem so sad and aren’t one of us but have the Fade etched into your eyes. You’re a Voice.”

He was positive she was speaking the Trade Tongue, yet she made no sense. “I-”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want. I just want you to know that we know. And that we’re all on your side.”

Aran blinked.

“Zachariah lost his Voice during the skirmishes after Kirkwall’s Circle collapsed. It took him weeks to come back to himself. And even now, he still… well. You know.”

He’d lost his voice? She said it like it meant something deep and terrible. Zachariah could speak now, just fine, albeit rarely. Neither of them liked to talk much about how they’d gotten to where they were. Was that it?

“You can trust me.”

She said it with such sincerity, all calm, steady eyes, and gentle pressure on his shoulder. “Mirra. I do trust you. I just don’t know what in blazes you’re talking about. Whatever you think you overheard… Neriel… She’s a friend. Was a friend. In another life.” Literally. “I certainly never spoke for her.”

“But-“

“Mages have enough folk trying to drag them around and make them do things against their will and interest. Even among the Dalish, power has consequences. I don’t want to be one of those people. I thought I’d said as much.”

“You have, you've proved that to me and several of the others, but that’s not… I don’t mean a voice like that. I mean… you _bonded_ with her. With your friend.”

“I think that word means something different to you than it does me.”

“No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. It doesn’t. She didn’t explain… what that meant?”

“Being friends isn’t something that needs explaining, typically.” Aran studied Mirra’s face. She looked like she was speaking to a child. A very stupid child. “Mirra… I really don’t want to talk about Neriel right now, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Of course. Of course.” Why did she say that with such pity? “I only wanted to say… we understand.”

He wanted to curl into a ball and scream, or beg Mythal to send him back to his time, to Dorian, to where he belonged, or simply dive headlong into the ocean. He touched the burn scar at his throat absently, tracing the fingertips. Scalding hand, white hot heat, anguish in those dark eyes... How many times had he touched those fingertips, not knowing, not remembering… “What do you mean: ‘all mages have voices’? You say that like it means something… big. How is this the first I’m hearing of this?”

“You’re sure you’re up for this conversation? You seem… shocky.”

“I’m heartbroken and I’m deeply unenthused by the idea that you’re all pitying me for no reason.” Aran sneezed as a bit of dust tickled his nose.

“Sympathy, not pity.”

“I don’t give a damn about semantics, Mirra; I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“When you and Neriel were together… you didn’t feel… you know… the power? Not the… physical sensation, but the spiritual-“

“Whoa- _No_ \- what? Physical? Like _sex_? With _Neriel_?”

“Not just that; the closeness, the knowing-“

“Gods, she has a bond-mate and a baby, for- ugh, even if she didn’t… _no_. Gods, no.”

Mirra squinted at him. “You look like you’re about to throw up.”

“Because: _ew._ ”

She frowned. “You were shattered. I could hear it in your voice, the way it broke, the way you sounded when you finally remembered.”

“Not _her,_ for all that’s holy. She’s fine. She will be. Has been.” He shook his head. “Look. It’s… personal. And complicated.”

“I know,” she said somberly.

 _You don’t know anything_ , he wanted to shout. But he couldn’t explain, not in a way she’d understand. Not in a way that wouldn’t make him sound mad or possessed.

“My Voice…” she continued, heedless, “he’s nearby. It's awful. Watching the seasons change for us in time, knowing I’m so close and yet… I’m afraid. I’m afraid - if I find him and lose him… it will be so much worse than never finding him at all.” She tucked her chin to her chest, her hand forgotten on his shoulder. “I don’t have a right to ask, but… was it worth it?”

“Yes.” Whatever she meant by ‘voice’, she was talking about love. And love… he knew that. Not enough. Not for long enough. But he knew it. Viscerally, at the moment. Months of yearning, feelings rooting and blossoming like sageroot, tender wishes and thoroughly distracting lust, pining and finding and closing that distance, all the irritating misunderstandings and patient tenderness, grasping and gasping, tumbling down, down, down into those eyes, drawing sighs and shouts from those lips- all condensed into a singular mind-bending moment. Now resurrecting itself in his mind over and over again. _I love him, I love him, I love him-_ Enough? Never. Worth it? Absolutely. _Sometimes_ , _he_ _even_ _loves_ _me_ _back_. “For me. Yes. It was. Is.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair and then rested that hand on hers. “Nearby, you said?”

“In a city. He has an accent like yours. He’s…” she bit her lip. “I haven’t told anyone any of this.”

He hesitated, “Look, you don’t have to-“

“But I want to, Hale. I really do. I… I don’t know what your…” she frowned.

Aran tugged in his earlobe. He didn’t want to say Dorian’s name. Not without knowing more about where they were. The Dorian of this world could be put in danger by having his name mentioned for any number of reasons. Suspicions in war could get good people killed. Was he with the Inquisition here? Still in the Imperium? If Aran found him, would Dorian be inclined to burn him again? Use him? Kiss him? Kill him? “Isalen[1]. You can call him Isalen.” And wasn’t that too close to the bloody truth. 

“Oh.” She lifted a brow, “Oh! I see. Alright. What Isalen told you about the bond-“

“I’m not bonded, Mirra.”

“ _Right_. Oh, Andraste, I am so, so sorry. I’m terribly insensitive- It’s only… my whole life, I've dreamt of my Voice. I don’t know if I can stand it any more… Ever since we arrived here, knowing that I’m not running, not being hounded every moment… all I can think of is him. Every day, it’s worse. This… _need._  Rising. Do you understand?”

”Yes.”

“Knowing he’s right there, that if I went to that city, I could see him with my waking eyes… but the dangers are still too great. I keep reminding myself. That risking his safety and mine, maybe losing him entirely-“ she looked at him, flushed. “I don’t know what to do.”

Aran gazed at the clouds as she tried to catch his eye. She was in love. With someone who didn’t know her. Because she’d seen things he hadn’t. Could see their future laid out for them even though he hadn’t had a whisper of it. Voices, eh? No. He had no idea what _that_ was like. “Is he happy?”

“I… am not sure I know what that looks like any longer. He’s less content than he has been. More tired. But he’s… alright. Safe.”

“Would inserting yourself into his life make it better?”

“He’s alone.” She rested her cheek against Aran’s shoulder, “I could make him less alone. Let him be cherished, needed- but is it worth the risk?”

Aran shut his eyes. _Are you alone, my love? Are you still worried about someone trampling your heart in the dark?_ “Did you leave Kirkwall to live free or to be safe?”

“Both.” She sighed, “I suppose they don’t come together?”

“Which is more important, Mirra?”

The gulls called over the sound of waves as they knelt there in the garden, thinking of different men who didn’t know to think of them. “Freedom,” she said finally.

“Alright.” He squeezed her hand. “Let’s find your Voice then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Using Project Elvhen. Dorian’s alias in this story - Isalen - is Elvhen for “himself”. Which is one letter off from Isalem, meaning “needed, lusted, desperately desired, desired sexually”. Dalish is fun.


	5. dancing on the head of a pin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lost in a world not his own, Aran returns to Ostwick’s capital to seek answers and help a friend, only to learn he has more questions than he’d thought.

What he wanted was to get every one of his charges to Ferelden, Aran thought as he sat beside Mirra, both of them silently finishing their morning porridge, eyeing the city’s walls warily. So many people. Horses. Carts. Guards. The seat of Ostwick’s Teyrn. To the east, the Circle tower peered over the cliffs towards the sea, like a drunk old man preparing to give back the too-many ales he’d imbibed.

How had he ever believed Circles were a good idea? Aran wondered furiously as he rinsed out his bowl, pouring the water over the guttering fire. Little better than prisons, weren’t they? Not that he’d had much of a choice of when to stay or leave from the Chantry himself, he realized, but there wasn’t a military force waiting to lock him into his mind if he took a day off to go fishing.

He had a sudden image of Dorian, magelights in the dark behind and around him, as Redcliffe’s towers stood strong and clear in the sunset. Redcliffe. Ferelden. A place where mages walked free. Was Redcliffe free? It was such a clear memory. If he could lead his people south, farther from Kirkwall and the Imperium, then perhaps he could keep them safe. Then again... Someone would have to hold the fort at the manor; he wouldn’t be here forever - Mythal only knew how long he’d remain before he felt himself flicker and fall into the next world and the one after that. Someone would have to carry on at Trevelyan.

The tap on his shoulder lifted his gaze from the smoke. Mirra’s eyes were shaded by a broad brimmed woven hat. Something about it tugged at him, itching at the edges of his mind, but it passed as he noted the nervousness in her eyes. Trevelyan had been safety and reprieve for her as much if not more than it had been for him, and each day’s travel from those carefully repaired walls leeched the ease from each of them. “You know, it’s been years since I was here.”

“So you've said.”

“I can’t speak to how it may have changed.” He wet his lip, “You’re sure you don’t want me to scout it out first?”

“If I wait here, I’ll lose my nerve.”

He nodded, understanding. “Then we’ll go together.”

“Thank you.”

“Sure.”

“No, _Hale_. Thank you. Truly.”

Aran frowned uncomfortably, “If I tell you to run, run.”

Mirra gently tucked her soft brown hair behind her ear with a small shake of her head. “I will stand with you, whatever happens.” She held a hand up as he bristled, “I’ve run enough. I think you know that feeling.”

She was right, if not for the right reasons. He scrubbed his fingers through his tangled hair, massaging his scalp, sighing. “I stand with you, too.”

She smiled, “I know.”

If not Ferelden… maybe west of Orlais. The Nahasin Marshes... he remembered them: damp sand grinding in his teeth and every other place. That said, they were largely unpopulated and, between the Dalish and the free folk, he was fairly certain the mages could secure a place for themselves. At least the marshes had been free when he had known them. For all he knew, there were Venatori and dragons raising unicorns for Andraste there now.

Every path started from the same point, though. He needed more information. The bits and pieces he’d gleaned from the mages’ dreams weren’t clear enough to base plans on and they were - rightfully - careful about what they shared with him. Whatever they believed him to be - Voice or mage or madman - he had maintained his distance as best he could. He wasn’t one of them and he knew he didn’t belong. Not with them. Not in this world. To teach them to rely on him in any way would be a betrayal. He would go… if not home, then somewhere else. And they needed to go, too. Somewhere safe.

South or West. Which was best?

Ostwick was bustling. Even having seen the gates from afar, it surprised him. Threw him. He’d been so alone at the manor, staring out across the sea… Even with his shifting collection of runaway mages, he’d still been mostly on his own. They all had their own thoughts and nightmares to consume them at Trevelyan. And it had been easy to imagine that the rest of this world was quiet and barely populated and solemn.

Not so.

They slipped past the guards at the gate by hitching a ride on the underside of a merchant’s cart, Mirra glaring daggers at him the whole time as they held their breaths and watched the guards’ boots circle the cart. Then the cart moved again and lifted as the merchant began to unload his wares. Aran dropped to the ground and peered out between the wheels, carefully helping Mirra to the ground and rolling out when the coast was clear.

And that was that. They were in.

Ostwick. His home for three years. The Chantry here would have records. All he had to do was gain access to them. They would find this man from Mirra’s dreams, ascertain what the best course of action was for the mages back at the manor, and go from there.

He breathed deep the scent of horse dung and sweat and the closed quarters of a thousand souls in one of the most fortified cities in the Marches.

And grinned. Merciful mother, it felt good to be home among the sweat and stink. Familiar. 

“It’s unseemly,” Mirra was muttering. “Sneaking in under a wagon. Like thieves.”

“Maybe I am a thief.”

“No, _Hale_ , you’re a survivor.” She rolled her eyes. “You thought the guards would notice your eyes and you’d get us into trouble. I know you.”

“You keep thinking you do, anyway.”

“I’m a good judge of character.” She crossed her arms, “I knew you were bound to _Isalen_ , didn’t I? And before that, I knew we could trust you.” She lifted her brows, “I know you’re not telling us everything about who you are. Trying to protect us or yourself; maybe both. But within your soul, beneath all the layers, there’s a man I believe in. I don’t have to know everything about you to know that.”

“Mirra...” Aran frowned. Not for the first time, he wondered if maybe she would understand, help him make sense of this-

“You don’t have to tell me. Just know that I know.”

“You know what I know? And you’re still sane?” Aran asked, dropping an arm around her shoulders. “I need a drink. What do you think?”

“It’s not even mid-day.”

“Mead?” he asked. “Or ale?”

“It’s as if nothing is happening out in the world,” she said softly. “Everything’s so normal here.” She looked at him, “And then there’s us.”

Aran shrugged. “Ale,” he decided, and guided her through the streets. He knew them. The same way he knew the steps down to the shore from the manor, his feet knew the path through this city, recognized some of the weather-beaten wooden doors, signs or no, for entrances to apothecaries and grocers, scribes and butchers.

The tavern they entered was lively with chatter and song. Aran accepted the mug of thick, frothy ale greedily and awkwardly avoided eye contact with the bartender as Mirra attempted not to stare at everyone and everything. She, at least, could blend in. He was endangering her by keeping her close. Fucking Alexius. Fucking Danarius. Fucking Fade. Fucking timestreams. Fucking blighted Fadestitched eyes.

He pushed a few bits across the bar with his emptied tankard. One of the benefits to the crowding of the city so far had been the ease of lifting coin pouches from peoples’ belts. Mirra, tactfully, had said nothing when he’d disappeared from her in the street only to reappear with said pouches. Desperate times, he imagined she thought. Or was rethinking what he’d said about thieves. Would Dorian have wanted a thief? Maybe, to keep him in those silks and rings... _rings_ _glinting_ _by_ _firelight_ , _fingers_ _brushing_ _his_ _belly_ _lower_ , _lower_...

“You’re full of it,” a tough tenor grunted as he took a newly vacated stool beside Aran. Aran ducked his head, cheeks flaring. Present. He needed to stay present.

“I swear-” the baritone with him insisted, “they said this Inquisition’s got a Trevelyan fighting rifts in the veil for them.”

“Trevelyan’s fucking haunted. There aren’t any of them left.” The tenor audibly shuddered, “Even Cyrene won’t touch the place. You know I met a merchant said he thought he saw smoke coming out of it only a couple weeks ago. Says he’s changed his route now so as not to go near it. Fucking ghosts, corpses, and demons: that’s all that’s come out of that place in the last decade.”

Aran tilted his head, listening intently, as Mirra folded her hands around her mug of mulled wine.

“Well, one got out apparently and he’s in Ferelden. Or near there, anyway. Some place called Skyhold.”

There was a ringing in his ears. Inquisition. Skyhold. He remembered a prison. Shackles. Darkness. Pain shattering his every nerve ending like glass threads. Warm grass under his bare feet with snowy mountains in the distance. Tapestries and carved mosaics and a throne. A throne? His. He knew it was his, but how? He wasn’t a king- he flattened his bound left palm on the bar. His knees were shaking. Heartbeat pounding like an army’s drums in his ears. His throne. His army. Fuck. Fuck. 

“If the Inquisition has a Trevelyan, I’m not going anywhere near them, and neither should you, recruitment drive or no. Someone oughta warn them they’d better be ready for bullshit from the netherworld to pour out of the woodwork on them.”

“It already is, Tanner, that’s the problem-”

“Recruiting?” Aran asked quietly, his gaze downcast on his newly filled tankard. 

“Huh? Yeah- apparently. Stupid, weak Ferelden fuckers can’t handle one or two demons poking through.” The tenor - Tanner - grunted, pointing to Aran’s metal pauldron. “Och- That’s Templar, innit?”

“My brother was one.” Aran shifted his shoulder out of reach. It was true, he realized as he said it. Maybe not here, but somewhere. Stern, judging blue eyes beneath pale gold brows. A smirk that could have turned milk. A hand on his shoulder, large, small, _jump_ , _why_ _don’t_ _you_ _jump_ , _what_ _are_   _you_? S _cared_? 

“Really?” Mirra asked, mousy brow winging.

“Yes,” Aran ran his tongue over his teeth. The space of a missing tooth just before his back tooth on the right. Blood on his lip, in his throat. _Boys_ _will_ _be_ _boys_ , _let_ _them have_ _it_ _out_. 

“Condolences.” The baritone hung his head, assuming the ‘was’ meant his brother had died. Maybe he had. Maybe, here, he’d never even lived. “Was he at the Conclave or…?”

“Kirkwall.” Aran chucked his chin, scratching the scruff of his beard. That was true, too. The hiss of sympathy from the two men was genuine. The sudden chill coming his way from Mirra was not sympathetic. It was downright arctic. Later. He would explain later. How was he supposed to explain? “Are they offering to ferry folks to the south, or are we supposed to find our own way?”

“To Ferelden?” Tanner laughed hollowly, “There’s easier ways to die.”

“Maybe I’d like a harder way.”

“There’s a boat due, south down the coast, between here and Whitechurch. You know the old lighthouse? Said they’re leaving with whoever they can take end of the week.” The baritone leaned across his friend, “You thinking of joining up?”

Aran drank deep. Joining up? With his own army? He needed to throw up. He drank more. “What else is there?”

“Aye, what else, indeed,” the tenor, Tanner, toasted him. “The whole South’s going to the Void. Demons and whoresons. Won’t be long til we’re headed there, too.”

“What do you call Kirkwall?” The baritone snorted, “A picnic?”

“Och, that’s _their_ problem, though, innit? Now, the Teyrn, he’d never let things fall so astray in Ostwick. Templars running the show,” he scoffed, “little wonder ‘tis that the whole feckin’ capital went up in flames. No offense to your fallen brother, friend.”

“None taken,” Aran told his half-emptied mug of ale.

“Last I heard,” the baritone grumbled, “demons couldn’t travel over water. We’re better off up here, dealing with the abominations that are like to roll over from Kirkwall and Starkhaven than sailing down to places where the skies are opening up.”

“You think there aren’t rifts up here?” Aran asked softly.

“Eh? No- those are down near the Conclave-”

“They’re everywhere. They’re out in the oceans, up in the hills. I’ve seen them.”

“Oh yeah? Then why aren’t we flooded with demons?”

“Maybe because Ostwick treats her mages well.” Aran turned to meet their eyes. “And we treat Ostwick well in return.”

“Fuck me, you’re- and you’ve actually seen ‘em? Here? Demons and everything?”

“I have.”

“And lived to tell- Maker’s tits, man. How’d you get away?”

“From what?“ Aran asked carefully.

“The demons, man. None of my business, the rest, is it?”

“I fought them until they fled back to the Fade and the rifts closed behind them.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I shit you not.”

“It’s true then, what they’re sayin’ about the air just opening up?”

“Tearing, aye, like that Breach up in the skies, only closer to the ground, or under it. You see the air start to flex, you run. You find mages, strong ones, and you back them up, barricade the area.”

“Shit.” The baritone grunted, “Maybe we _should_ go to the Inquisition. Get them to send some folk up here instead of taking our strong for some fight down South.”

“One hand shakes the other,” Aran shrugged. “It’s all hands on deck now, boys. Thanks for your time.” He dropped a pair of silver on the bar for them as he stood. “And good luck to you both.”

“Aye, and to you.”

Mirra grabbed him by the elbow, cramming close as they shoved through the crowd. “The hell was that?” she whispered, rushed, in his ear.

“Inquisition.”

“And what’s that?”

“I’m not sure.” A woman with a headdress like dragon’s horns. A dwarf with a wide, calculating grin. A Templar- no... Seeker. Seeker of Truth. Fuck if he couldn’t use that right now. “Could be it’s an answer.” He opened the door for her and followed her out onto the street as she turned towards him.

“The answer to what?”

Everything. Maybe everything. “Somewhere to ferry the mages to, as they come. It’s-”

“Chantry, is what it is. It’s Circles and Sisters all over again.”

“No. It’s different. I think. _If_ it’s what I think-“ words tumbled, “it’s an organization, outside of the rules of the Chantry or any single nation-”

Mirra hissed, “I don’t want to fight any more, _Hale._  I doubt many of us do.”

“No, but you can heal. You can build barriers. You can hunt and fish and cook, build fires. And in return, you’d find protection from those that would harm you. Respect for your gifts.” Why? Why was it important? _His_. Because they were his. Aran sighed, shaking his head to clear it, “It’s not my call. I’m not telling you what to do, or anyone, I’m just saying- it’s a possibility. We’ll have to learn more about them. I’m not going to do anything to put you all in harm’s way. Okay?”

Mirra frowned, taking inventory of every doorway and window up and down the street before she met his gaze again, “Your brother. What was his name?”

Aran blinked. “Patrick,” he said with his own voice ringing in his ears, screaming the name as he fell, fell, fell... “Not my greatest fan, nor I his.”

“I can imagine. Mages and Templars. We’re all a mess.” She peered down at her hands, “He’s dead?”

Was he? “I don’t know. Probably. I haven’t heard from him since… well. I haven’t heard.”

Mirra frowned, “You could have said something.”

How? How when he hadn’t known? He bowed his head, lying and hating himself for it, “I could have. You’re right. What should I have said? When? The only reason I mentioned him in there was I was afraid they’d think I’d killed a templar and stolen his gear. Which I didn’t. So. Quick thinking. That was all.”

“All right.” She slipped her arm through his, “We _have_ protection, you know. We have each other and we have you. And apparently the myths surrounding our home.”

“True enough.” Aran glanced at her with a small smile. Our home, indeed. It warmed him that she thought of it that way. “So- I need to find this recruiter they’ve sent out, see what information I can wring out of him. Any idea where in town we’re supposed to find your fella?”

“Calum.” It was the first time she’d said his name aloud to him. Mirra closed her eyes, fingers absently fluttering over her shoulder. “There’s a fountain near a small stand of trees. A little stall that sells fruit, beneath them.”

“The unbroachable square.”

“What?”

Gods, this place... “Technically, it’s the Umbredd Square, but my father always called it the ‘unbroachable square’. Oldest working fountain in the Marches. Runs from a spring. And since the city keeps surviving Qun invasions…”

“Unbroachable.” She smiled softly, “Quite a lot of pride in your homeland, your family has.”

“If you’re going to lead, you have to love the land you’re protecting more than you love the folk who die for it.” Aran bit his lip, hearing his father’s voice fall from his lips. Disturbing. And yet... his father’s voice. Clear as a bell in his head. “In any case. It’s at the university entrance. What’s he look like?”

“I’m not- I’m not going to tell you.”

“Eh? Why not?”

“Because you’re reckless and I don’t plan to say anything to him. I just want to see that he’s well and then-“

Aran shook his head, “You came all this way to- you only want to see that he’s well, let’s go to the inn. You can take a nap.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It sure as fuck is. We go to the fountain, you put on your happy face, stick out your hand, and say salutations. Madwoman.” He tapped his head against hers. “Two days traveling by foot and you just want to check his health. _Dirthara_ - _ma_.”

“I came all this way to help you-“

“Merciful Mother, Mirra. Don’t be an ass.”

She laughed, covering her lips, “An ass?”

“Aye. What’s the problem? Is he an eyesore? Is that it? Or- oh, he’s _not_. He’s _too_ pretty. You think I’ll try to poach him from you.” He smirked, “I promise, there is no man on this earth who is as handsome as my _Isalen._ You’ve nothing to fear from me.” He continued cheerily as she dissolved into laughter, “You think I’m joking. I have terrible taste and look a wreck, so there’s no way I could warrant the attention of someone beautiful, is that it? And yet- ah, and _yet_. And if it’s possible for me, it’s possible for anyone, eh? Confidence, madness, and the foolhardy will to charge headlong into defeat. That’s all it takes to sweep the pretty ones off their feet. That and a certain amount of agility.” He brushed her cheek with his thumb as tears of mirth spilled, “And bathing. I’m reminded often that that is paramount.”

“Stop,” she rasped. “It hurts.”

“You laugh now. Someday, I’ll draw you a picture of the poor gorgeous creature who’s had to put up with me. Then you’ll cry real tears. Mostly because my illustrations are very, very poor.” He kissed her forehead, “You’re lovely, eyes all shining. We should find somewhere in the shade to lie in wait. And plums. Have you had Ostwick plums? We’ll get two.”


	6. The fountain in the Unbroachable Square.

It started raining around midday, the spaces between the cobbles in the square fast becoming puddles or sluices for mud. Mirra tucked her toes up onto the bench under her dress, watching with amusement as people gamboled and cursed through the muck. Of course, Hale didn’t help her manage her mirth. When he wasn’t yawning on about his famed Isalen, he was poking fun at every trader and guardsmen who passed them by. In the last two hours, she would have wagered that she’d heard him speak more than she had in the whole of the last few months. Perhaps it was the ale he’d quaffed. Or the nerves - his or hers, she couldn’t be sure. Perhaps both. 

She had grown so used to feeling anxious, she couldn’t be certain how much of her nerves were attached to the idea of seeing Calum versus being out and about among the people. Superstitious people, even. It was true that Hale’s conversation at the tavern hadn’t turned anyone out on them with pitchforks, but that was him. He had a way with people, even when he was being a curmudgeon. Or a braggart.

“Gods above, and his arms-“

“That’s enough,” she laughed. 

“My point is: you’ll have no trouble nor reason to fear from me.”

She held her hand up to shield the top of her head from the steady drip through the trees. “I am well assured. But I wasn’t worried. Not about that.”

“Good.” He paused. Lighter than she’d known him. Eyes as strange and changeable as the Fade itself. The spread of vallaslin up one side of his face, tendrils peeking out of his soft white beard. With his penchant for elvhen gods and curses and his elvhen sweetheart, he might as well have been an elf himself. She’d known elves, but they’d been city elves, raised in alienages until they’d been brought to the circle. None had been as determinedly  _ elvish _ as her friend Hale. Friend. Strange to think of him that way. It hadn’t occurred to her in such terms before, when they’d been gardening and hunting and fishing and fixing walls and tanning leather… He’d just been Hale, the broken man who’d saved them and seemed to be working on figuring out how to save himself. But now, sitting on a bench in a city square in a downpour… she tried to picture him at the Circle. All wild disarray and leaping trains of thought, quoting from collections of poetry and historians and magical theory as easily as the sky sprinkled raindrops. Had he always been like this? Had he once been subdued and obedient, marking time, gazing out the window, wishing he could find the man he dreamed of? She’d never thought of him as a Circle mage, but if his brother had been a Templar, there was no way his family would have let him live as an apostate. Perhaps he’d concealed his gifts from them somehow - _somniari_ could be more subtle than most and with the aid of a Dalish mage in his mind… perhaps his family still didn’t know what exactly he was. Or was that why he’d said he and his brother hadn’t had a good relationship? 

An enigma. That’s what he was. Perhaps partially because he didn’t entirely know himself. And yet, he seemed to. More today than ever before. Or was that just that he was talking about it more now? How much did he remember? When would he share it? Did she want to know?

She hadn’t spent time in the Kirkwall Circle. Her life in Hasmal had been dull and peaceful until the rebellion had reached them; then the people around her - her longtime friends and mentors - had changed. Some literally into abominations. Others revealing dark fury and bitterness. Their feelings had evoked something in her: fear, frustration, and a wave of deep anger that they’d lied to her. She had trusted them, relied on them to guide her and help her find a way to be of use to others as the Chant taught, and they’d spent her whole life telling her that this was the best way of things when they themselves didn’t believe it. It wasn’t until she’d left that she’d learned how cruel the world could be. Perhaps she had been caged, but she’d been safe in that cage. Before the years she’d spent running, hiding, hiding who she was. Until she’d found the refugees from Kirkwall who’d spoken of a way out. A journey to a safer place. The borders between the city-states were closed, but there were miles of coast. All it took was some ingenuity, timing, and assistance. And there was assistance to be had from the rebels of Kirkwall, so she’d risked the Templars and the mage-hunters to find them.  

What was Hale’s story, she wondered. There was juice on his chin. A smile on his lips as he watched the fountain in the rain. Ripples of water colliding with ripples of water. Nature versus man. History and mystery. “Hale- can you…” Her heart stuttered in her chest as she caught sight of a profile across the square. 

Calum. 

His name in her pulse. His breath in her lungs. She swallowed, dry-mouthed, gazing past Hale’s face to the broad, solemn face she’d only seen in dreams. Behind the circles of glass perched on his nose, she knew his eyes were a soft, hazy brown like the fur of one of the ponies she’d been taught to ride as a girl before… before. 

Calum.

“Mirra?” Hale lifted a brow, glancing back over his shoulder. 

“Don’t look-” she hissed, but he was already turning, standing, lifting an arm. “Maker, what are you doing?”

Calum paused in the rain, plucking the pince-nez from the bridge of his nose, brushing his dark hair back from his face. His lips curved, widened improbably into a smile. Mirra forgot to breathe as he picked up his pace, hurrying across the courtyard towards them. Why? How? She couldn’t remember him being this open. He’d always been so concentrated, steady, studious, distant… so very far away. He slipped the pince-nez into a pouch at his waist and grabbed Hale, tugging him into a firm embrace, clapping him on the back. “Brother Aran!”

Mirra gaped at them, invisible, as Hale stared at him, startled. 

“I’m afraid not-”

Calum waved a hand, “Aye, aye, you told me some other name. Fox, was it? Something like that? Do you know how bloody often it rains in this thrice-blasted city? I’d nearly given up expecting you to show, you know. But after the collection I’ve comprised, I’m glad I didn’t. And-” he turned to meet Mirra’s eyes. Her fingers curved around the edge of the bench to hold herself in place.  _ Breathe _ , she reminded her lungs. _ You know how. _ He squeezed Hale lightly on the shoulders and let go, turning to face her, searching her face with open curiosity. Curiosity and something… something… “My lady. My apologies, I-” He shook his head, study deepening, “You’re… you. Aren’t you? You know me, I think?” He tilted his head, offering an ink-smudged hand to her, “Can- Let’s leave the rain, yes?”

She touched that hand because she could do nothing less. Calloused and rain-damp. The Maker’s tears fell as glass through a clear pond - slow and ineffable. The world shrank around them, tightening into the contact of palms and gazes. There was music in heartbeats that she’d never truly appreciated. Heartbeats and the bellsong of water against water. “Yes,” she answered, or thought she did. He knew her. He  _ knew _ her. How? “How?”

“He told me he’d see me again and I would understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Sacrifice.” He swallowed, exhaled hard. His breath touched her cheek. His fingers followed, brushing wet strands back over her ear. “Come with me. I’ll show you what I’ve found.”

“Yes.” Wrong. “No.” She shook her head, unsteady, “No. Who-” It took effort, but she dragged her gaze from the intricate muscles of Calum’s face and found Hale. Stark-white, pale as his hair, still frozen where Calum had embraced him as an old friend. Fox.  _ Hale _ was Dalish for fox, wasn’t it? “Brother?” she asked. 

Hale shook his head, “I don’t-”

“Took a blow to the head, yes? Still bringing bits back?” Calum grinned. “Brother Aran was one of my tutors when I first came to Ostwick; got me started on the path to the archives, he did.” He laughed, “You really do have a gift for foretelling.”

“I-”

“Right, right. The Inquisition. You said when I heard about it, I should start looking into it. I have. Right mess it is, but somehow it’s pulling off miracles in the south. I’ve gathered what I could about them. You were correct- they did recruit a mage from Tevinter. Nothing awry there, from what I’ve gleaned, but I’ve been keeping my ears open. And I’ve got all the Trevelyan records. And quite a lot else I thought might be of interest and use along the way. Not much on the Imperium’s military techniques here, I’m afraid. I’d written to Starkhaven and Kirkwall - their Circles have more eclectic collections - but then, well. You know. Kaboom.” He hadn’t let go of her hand. His thumb was rubbing light circles on her palm, absent his attention. “It’s incredible. I never  _ entirely _ was sure, you know, despite the pieces falling into place one by one, that you weren’t mad or pulling my leg or simply trying to find some way to gain my interest in record-keeping, until I saw you just now and you-” He looked back to Mirra, “And you.”

She shook her head, heart in her throat. He knew her. And Hale… had tutored him? She searched her memories of Calum as a boy. There had been a time when he’d wanted to become a Templar, but that had changed around his second year with the Chantry. Glimpses of tables laden with books, Calum’s cherubic face alternating between boredom and fascination, hooded priests lecturing. But that had been… twenty years at least. It was impossible. “He told you… about me?”

“He said he’d see to it that you found me. That it was fair I know to expect you, since you knew to expect me.” Calum laughed at her expression, which… she could feel the frown in her eyebrows. “It’s alright. I know what it is, what to expect… well. As best as I can. It’s awfully difficult to find a good written source for this sort of thing, but still… Is it so terrible?”

“No-” She felt herself sigh as his fingers brushed the curve of her ear. Was it terrible? No. But… unheard of. Yes. Unexpected. “I only-”

“Maker, you’re beautiful.” 

She stared at him. 

“In the rain and- we really need to go. I’ve got… crates of books and quite a lot of parchment and I imagine you’ll want to see what I’ve found. Yes?”

“Where?” Hale asked softly. 

“I’ll show you.”

“And the mage- the one they found. He’s… well?”

“Seems to be. There are rumors, you know, that he’s bonded to the Inquisitor, but there are rumors that those rumors are just rumors so… Witness statements are hardly a verifiable source, are they?”

“Right. Yes. No. They aren’t.” Hale swallowed, biting his lip. “Well. Let’s… see what you’ve got.”

Was it just the rain, she wondered, or did he suddenly seem, feel, look… so terribly sad?


	7. breaking mirrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love conquers some things. And what love can't conquer, the All-Mother can alter. To her own whims.

When Aran slept, he dreamt of dark, clever eyes. When he woke, he saw them in his mind’s eye even as he read through stolen, dusty tomes and a decade’s worth of Calum’s collected notes. Dorian’s eyes… 

And he saw for himself in excruciating detail just what the hell Mirra had been talking about. Voices. It was as though there were some kind of aura around herself and Calum, keeping them within distance, shimmering over their skin. Love, as he’d suspected, yes, but… more.

It was like watching flowers bloom or clouds moving through the sky ahead of a storm.

It made his heart sore.

If the rumor at the core of the rumors was true, then Dorian was… like this. Twitterpated. Immersed. Elsewhere. With someone else. Someone who’d once lived in the house he’d come to call home.

Sweet Mother, if that wasn’t the worst kind of painful irony. 

Mirra, for all that she misunderstood the why, was sensitive to his misery. She did try to hide her complete and utter, deep and abiding sense of rightness and joy from him. But there was no way that she could. There simply wasn’t. It would have been like attempting to turn off the sun. 

Aran couldn’t ask her to. Either of them. But neither could he stand to wait and watch. So he immersed himself as well - reading, studying, taking notes on notes, and trying not to notice the looks and touches and whispers and soft sneaking feet. It took them a week to secret Calum’s hidden library safely from the city and to gather everything that was needed for the winter at Trevelyan. His thoughts of going South were pushed far, far from his mind. If it was true…

If Dorian was happy…

This wasn’t his world, after all. He was but a visitor, albeit a visitor who couldn’t leave of his own accord. He didn’t belong, didn’t exist in its fabric. 

And this Dorian… who knew? He might be like this… Taran. Different, entirely, changed by the world in which he existed. Through a mirror altered. An eluvian of time. 

The work at Trevelyan was laborious and he welcomed the back-breaking distraction. The hunt was on, and with it training others for future hunts. Gathering pelts and meat. Pelts needed to be tanned. Meats needed to be salted and dried, or smoked. The roof needed mending again. The walls needed reinforcement. The cave below needed more bunks, more blankets, mended nets and fishing rods. He could go weeks without speaking more than a few words. He could make himself useful in a world that had no need of him. 

Every day, he felt smaller. Harder. Colder. 

Every day, winter stepped closer. Harder. Colder.

As the ice deepened on the windowpanes and the storm-mists rose higher and higher from the sea, he perched on the wall and watched for lanterns, for boats, for runners, for danger. Inside, he could hear them Chanting. If he concentrated, he could pick Mirra’s voice from the crowd. Calum’s was easy - he had no ear for rhythm. Gods, the Chantry must have been hell for him.

It had been a year. A year of watching and waiting and teaching and listening. How many more? “What do you want me to do?” he asked, watching the sea. “Go find them? Stay here? Lead these mages somewhere else?” He looked at his calloused, dirty hands and thought - how strange, are these mine? Have they always been mine? The flash of green bending and breaking his palm open, “I just… need some kind of sign, Mother. Anything.” He could see into it if he studied it close enough. It always made him sick to. Peering past the flash and brightness like staring into an ill sun, only to see the inverted mountains like grinning, dead, broken teeth. He shut his eyes, swallowing hard against nausea as it came. It would pass. It always did. 

The wind shifted, ruffling his hair against his face, the scent of salt wafting through him and away.

They were laughing now, less subdued than usual. Mirra and Calum’s union had brought hope to every one of them. Proof that they could bond and survive and find joy, if only for a short time. 

“ _ This _ doesn’t bode well.” 

The voice brought Aran’s head up with a snap. It couldn’t be. Not here. Not-

“Should have brought Varric-“ 

He blinked. Was that- He turned slowly, carefully… and there he was. All awkward angles and jovial frankness. Cocky brogue. Nervous courage. 

Not. Possible. 

Was it?

This place… the tavern, the lake, the castle ahead… Redcliffe. It had to be. If it in any way mirrored his world then this was… and yet he’d been… Well, he’d been in a temple and then the sea. And before that, he’d been in fits and starts, snatches of memories, places, and faces. So this could be… anything. Anywhere. Anytime. Only. It had to be Redcliffe. That tavern. He was sure he recognized it. And the tower in the lake. 

The monster of Lake Calenhad. 

“All-Mother… I don’t know if you’re here, or if you can hear me, or if this is some kind of sick joke, but - ” Only the sounds of the laughing drunks near the shore answered him. “I am so very fucked.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can probably tell, Aran will be returning to this timeline, but not for quite a bit. Join me for the next leg of his time-traveling adventure in Chapter 8 of 'the lucky one' (Here in this Moment Part 4): Come To My Window.


End file.
